


Close By

by th_esaurus



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: F/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 09:44:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13385211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: “Do I remind you of your mother?”“In some small ways,” he says, quiet.





	Close By

Illya Kuryakin is tied up inextricably with your memories of your father, in a way that flatters him more than he deserves. Like two carefully wound wires in your pocket that have become tangled, with no effort on your part; they simply overlap in too many places.

Your father had never been violent, never once laid a hand on you in anything other than soft affection. He adored you. You were bright and pretty, interested in his methodical tinkering with an enthusiasm you could never muster for your mother’s cooking or sewing. You preferred blueprints to art books, mathematics to poetry. Of course he adored you: you had the brain of the son he yearned for, before the war effort truncated his chances of attaining one.

You wonder if Illya’s mother was much the same, as if a kind of mirror: letting her boy’s soft blonde hair grow long, teaching him music alongside his martial arts, dancing him around their parlour on her feet, her heels and his laughter echoing around a room stripped bare of furniture, paintings, trinkets, even carpet: his father’s possessions.

You had read his file, of course. A fraught thirty minutes in the Staatsbibliothek, deciphering Waverly’s casual code to find two thin manilla files - _Kuryakin, I._ and _Solo, N._ \- stuffed right up against the spine of a little-read engineering manual. _Triple Pump Fuel System Modules_ , you remember. Perhaps Waverly was amusing himself.

You had read Illya’s file, so you knew he was close to his mother. _Oedipal tendencies._ You knew that during Illya’s third round interview for the KGB - twenty eight solid hours awake, dehydrated and unfed - a man called Stepanov, with a hare lip and an ugly smile, had asked Illya if he had ever had carnal relations with his mother. Illya broke three of his teeth and held his hand over Stepanov’s mouth until he had swallowed them.

Illya runs his finger over your bottom lip as you think about this. His touch is barely more than a wisp; it has been ghosting over your skin all evening, no more bother than a breeze, as though he is terrified of marking you in some way.

You know Illya to be capable of great violence. He is better than your father, in that way. Your father defended nobody’s honour. Not even his own.

“They called my father a Nazi when the word meant something like a hero,” you tell him easily, blandly. You have been quiet until now, but you don’t startle him. His dozy gaze focuses on your mouth, and then your eyes. “And they still called him a Nazi when it meant a murderer.”

It’s easy for the two of you to talk like this, naked, bared to each other. Two bodies instead of two spies. You have made love already this evening, and you like that he is flushed pink around his thighs and his chest; you like that he stares at the mess of hair between your legs instead of your prettier breasts; you like that his cock is soft for now and that he is capable of looking at you without desiring you.

Still, he does not talk about himself much. You’ve offered something, and you wait patiently, expectantly.

He is silent for a time, his fingertip slipping down from your mouth and across your chin, back up to your ear, over and around it, down the harder muscle of your neck. You can hear the clicking of his jaw, the way he moves it, tense, when he is fighting within himself. “When I was a child--” he starts, haltingly, “one of the men who betrayed my father--put his hand on my shoulder and told me, as though it was a joke: ‘Illyusha, your mother is the cheapest whore in all of Moscow.’”

You swallow the bitter scoff that comes naturally to you. He seems to appreciate the effort.

“Do I remind you of her?” you ask, daring. You have never been afraid that he will raise a hand to you; or rather, you have braced yourself not to be afraid when the hand rises.

“In some small ways,” he says, quiet.

It occurs to you that you could rile him. So often when you fuck, he treats you like glass, a hand-blown tchotchke he knows he would be soundly punished for breaking. He is thick-set and embarrassed about it, and urges you every time to _go slow, go slow--_

But you know well that he can be goaded.

You reach across his body for your lighter and cigarette case, on the bedside table. Light up, take a cursory drag, turn your face to blow the smoke away from him and into the room. You offer him the cigarette and he says no, but takes it anyway; holds it between his forefinger and thumb to stop his hand from curling into a fist and to stop you from smoking it. There is still the dregs of drink in your heavy glass, there on the table, and you drain it: the boys in your chop shop drank schnapps, and that is what you learnt to lean on.

You know your breath smells of over-ripe fruit and alcohol when you climb on top of him to kiss him. But he still cranes his neck up to better taste you, to chase your mouth as you dart teasing kisses he wishes were deeper. His big palms rest on your bony hips.

“Waverly told me, right at the start,” you say, already giddy at your bravery; a flat hand holding out sugar for an unbroken horse, “that if I ever thought either of you two boys were too hot on the scent, I should fuck you. As a distraction, you see.”

You do not give him a chance to interject. Barrel forward.

“It wouldn’t have worked on Napoleon,” you say, too blithe. “Maybe if I wasn’t a girl. He’s so clinical with girls.”

This comment, you know, will haunt Illya. The way you phrase it.

But for now, he manages to surprise you.

“And me?” he asks simply. His eyes are too earnest.

“And you?” You echo, mocking. Stalling, maybe.

You had wanted to, even back then. That is why you couldn’t.

It’s you who’s riled, and he knows it. His smile is light and fond; he likes that you’ve fooled yourself. You clasp his cheeks under your hands a squash them together, then apart, childish, scrubbing the grin from his lips and at last, he makes a rash move, grabs your wrists ungently and brings your fingers to his mouth. You expect him to kiss you. Instead, he pulls you forward until he can easily slide your fore and index finger against his wet tongue, and he bites down softly, as loving as a mother cat scruffing a wayward kitten.

You sigh against him. You let your thigh slip between his and flex it a little against his cock.

“You forgive me so easily,” you murmur.

“You are too small for the weight of my grudges,” he hums.

“I betrayed you,” you say, suddenly serious. You are certain - you know, you _know_ \- he has wounded, brutally and without thought for consequence, for far lesser slights.

You remember slapping your father, part act, part anger, the day before he died. His cheek just gave pliantly under your vicious hand. His expression was hangdog, expectant. He did not even try to deter you.

“--Yes,” Illya says, after a long time. He presses an absent kiss to the underside of your jaw, the rarely-touched skin there. “A good many people have.”

He is quiet then. You remind him too much of his mother.

You kiss him, as softly as you can. And then reach down between your bodies to steady his cock as you lift your hips and press him inside of you. “Go slow,” he whispers, as always; but you like that it takes some effort, even with how wet you are. It reminds you that nothing in this life comes easily.

You want him to fuck you twice more before the night is through, and you’ll let him do it his way: slowly, carefully. As long as he takes his time. Delaying inevitable morning, when you cease to be bodies and become whatever spies are again.

*

You never forgave your father. You loved him, but you could not forgive him.

Illya Kuryakin is a better man than he was; and better, too, than you.  



End file.
